The Transportation Institute published an analysis showing that the majority of foreign-flagged vessels operating under the Jones Act waiver had Port State Control (PSC) violations on record — violations that included findings related to fire safety, life-saving equipment, structural conditions, and crew welfare. The analysis drew on the international Port State Control inspection system, which is the standard global tool for evaluating whether foreign-flagged vessels meet international safety standards.
In response, a critic argued that Jones Act tankers have a higher deficiency rate than waiver vessels when examined under the same framework — specifically, 46% for Jones Act tankers vs. 27.6% for waiver tankers — and that this comparison uses “the same time frame, same inspection regime, same vessel type.” This claim is incorrect on its face, and the comparison it draws is not valid.
Port State Control (PSC) is an international enforcement mechanism. When a foreign-flagged vessel arrives at a port, the host country’s maritime authority can board it, inspect it against international safety conventions (SOLAS, MARPOL, the Maritime Labour Convention, etc.), and — if serious deficiencies are found — issue a detention order that prevents the vessel from departing until problems are corrected. PSC inspections are conducted by independent foreign governments. A detention is a sovereign enforcement action: another country has judged a vessel unfit to continue operating.
USCG domestic vessel inspections are a different system entirely. US-flagged vessels are required to hold a Certificate of Inspection (COI) issued by the Coast Guard, which is renewed through periodic mandatory examinations — annual, drydock, and others. These inspections ensure compliance with US domestic regulations. They are scheduled by requirement, not triggered by port arrival. Findings noted during a COI exam are part of an ongoing compliance process: they may include paperwork items, pending equivalency requests the vessel itself submitted for review, and items that the vessel’s classification society has already accepted. They are not enforcement actions by a foreign sovereign.
The USCG database used for both sets of numbers in the critique (PSIX/CGMIX) contains records from both of these very different inspection types. Treating them as equivalent — as the critique does — conflates routine domestic regulatory compliance with international safety enforcement.
The Transportation Institute’s analysis used the international Port State Control record — the full history of PSC inspections conducted on waiver vessels by maritime authorities around the world. This is the appropriate source for foreign-flagged vessels, which accumulate inspection records across every country they visit: Paris MoU (Europe and the North Atlantic), Tokyo MoU (Asia-Pacific), the US Coast Guard when in US ports, and other regional authorities.
The critique’s counter-analysis uses only USCG inspections of waiver vessels — inspections that occur when a foreign vessel enters a US port. This captures a small fraction of each vessel’s total inspection history. The 27.6% deficiency rate cited for waiver vessels reflects only what US inspectors saw in US ports. The same vessels, examined across their full international record, show a substantially higher violation rate — which is precisely what the Transportation Institute’s analysis found.
This is not a minor methodological quibble. A waiver vessel that was detained in Belgium, cited for structural deficiencies in Rotterdam, and flagged for life-saving equipment failures in Asia appears clean under a USCG-only view. Using that narrowed lens for waiver vessels while using a comprehensive domestic exam record for Jones Act vessels does not produce an apples-to-apples comparison.
Jones Act tankers operate exclusively in US domestic waters. They do not call at foreign ports as a matter of course, which means foreign Port State Control authorities — the Paris MoU, the Tokyo MoU, and others — do not inspect them. This is why Jones Act vessels are largely absent from the international PSC record: not because they are exempt from scrutiny, but because the international PSC system only applies to vessels calling at foreign ports.
The Jones Act fleet is instead subject to continuous USCG oversight through the mandatory Certificate of Inspection process. This is rigorous domestic regulation — but it operates under a different framework, for different purposes, with different consequences than international PSC enforcement. Items documented during a COI exam include things like pending applications for equivalency approvals, minor administrative compliance gaps, and maintenance findings already being addressed through the classification society. These count as “deficiencies” in the database but are categorically different from the kind of findings that lead a foreign government to detain a vessel.
A review of the underlying records for Jones Act tanker deficiencies shows the difference concretely. Among the items counted: vessels with equivalency requests pending Coast Guard engineering review (items the vessel’s operator voluntarily initiated), findings that the classification society accepted as a recognized condition, and administrative requirements related to crew reporting procedures. None of these resulted in a detention.
Across the full international Port State Control record, multiple waiver vessels have been detained — barred from leaving port by a foreign maritime authority that independently determined the vessel posed an unacceptable risk. Detention is the PSC system’s most serious finding. It requires the vessel to remain in port, often for days or weeks, until deficiencies are corrected and reinspected.
Across the USCG domestic inspection record for Jones Act tankers: zero detentions.
No amount of percentage-point arithmetic changes this. The PSC detention record is the clearest available signal of which vessels international maritime authorities have judged to pose a genuine risk.
| Waiver fleet (as analyzed by Transportation Institute) | JA fleet (as cited in the critique) | |
|---|---|---|
| Inspection system | International PSC — Paris MoU, Tokyo MoU, USCG, and others | USCG domestic COI / administrative exams |
| Conducted by | Independent foreign maritime authorities | US Coast Guard (domestic regulator) |
| Triggered by | Port arrival / risk targeting | Mandatory schedule |
| Most serious finding | Detention (vessel barred from leaving port) | None — zero JA detentions on record |
| “Deficiencies” include | Enforcement findings requiring correction | Pending equivalency requests, class-accepted items, administrative requirements |
The critique’s claim that these represent “the same inspection regime” is not accurate. Using domestic USCG compliance records for one fleet and international PSC enforcement records for another, or using USCG-only records for both while ignoring the full international PSC history of the waiver fleet, does not produce a valid safety comparison. The Transportation Institute’s analysis used the international PSC record because that is the system designed to evaluate whether foreign-flagged vessels meet international standards — and it found that the majority of waiver vessels fell short of those standards.